1-3 the Sunset's Birdcage
by Ri-Ryn
Summary: Twice reincarnated and now the third flesh to encase the past souls, she had no idea who or what Higurashi Kagome was. A dead priestess, an older deceased captain, and a whimpering girl. [Bleach reference to Unohana Retsu. Ficlet/Snippet story]
1. Higurashi Kagome

**Title:** 33.3% of the Sunset's Birdcage

**Author:** Ri-Ryn

**Chapter 1:** Higurashi Kagome

**Genre:** Drama/Angst

**Word Count:** 320

**Rating:** M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens)

**Disclaimer:** Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

**Summary:** Twice reincarnated and now the third flesh to encase the past souls, she had no idea who or what Higurashi Kagome was. A dead priestess, an deceased captain, and a whimpering girl. [Bleach reference to Unohana Retsu. Ficlet/Snippet story]

**Warnings:** Heavy Language. Slight Body Dysphoria & Body Horror. Mental Disorder/sorta' psychosis eventually?

**A/N:** Horrible idea, really, but I've been on an Inuyasha kick lately during summer college and 200-400 words is easier to churn out than actual chapters. My first ever snippet/ficlet story and Inuyasha story. No plot right now? Sporadic updates. Unohana, remembered one day she too has blue eyes and black hair.

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He was decidedly not a nice boy, whatever that constituted to whomever. Constantly, he was incessant in attempting to reign dominant over the children at the playground. He was a tyrant and incrementally, with time, Kagome found herself offended. She told Mama to pick her up later, today, the same as Nanase-kun was.

He trailed behind her on the play gym, standing in line with the slide's entrance. Kagome whirled, and Nanase-kun found himself sliding down backwards, head first with narrowed blue eyes watching. Kagome followed his screaming descent a second later with a smile, coming to hover over him. She made herself comfortable on his heaving, crying chest. Nanase's face was molted red, lip bleeding where he bit in blind terror. Kagome would bet it was when his head made contact with the ground below.

"Nanase-kun, you shouldn't play so rough, so meanly on the playground. You," Kagome prodded the split lip, observing his wince with fresh tears and his blood on her finger, "could really hurt someone. Okay?"

She left her fingers in the wound. "You won't tell your Mama or Papa, right?"

He nodded and her smile faded, indifferent as she leaned in for a closer look to his self-harm. "I need to wash your cut now, Nanase-kun."

He quietly sat upright as she went about wetting her scarf in the fountain, cleaning his lip before erasing the mess of abrasions on the back of his legs. The bandage, purple with moon rabbits, sat at the junction of his mouth and came from the pretend purse strapped across her back.

When Kagome got home, she shifted past the kitchen up to her room to close the door. In the dark, she stuffed her own mouth with her comforter and wailed. She felt, heard and saw the monster Higurashi Kagome was. She cried because someone hurt the boy, treated him, and only Kagome knew how wrong she was.


	2. The 4th Captain

**Title:** 33.3% of the Sunset's Birdcage

**Author:** Ri-Ryn

**Chapter 2:** The 4th Captain

**Genre:** Drama/Angst

**Word Count:** 304

**Rating:** M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens)

**Disclaimer:** Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

**Warnings:** Heavy Language. Slight Body Dysphoria & Body Horror. Mental Disorder/sorta' psychosis eventually? Blood. Violence. Death.

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_Unohana Retsu would have sat on her ass, pleased as peaches that Zaraki Kenpachi knew how to hold back his strength. Yachiru thought it was beyond unsightly that the thirteenth squad captain would hinder himself for hundreds of years out of what was essentially a child's fear. That's why she did this, put two of Hell's creatures into a jar and sealed the lid up nice and tight. This is why she became so proficient with healing kidō: why both her bankai and shikai were perfect mirrors to reflect back the two facets of the original Zaraki herself._

_She glanced down, feeling the slightest burn from the sword now puncturing her chest to skewer the heart she never gave much thought too: the mortality she had not thought of in a millennia. Minazuki laid on the ground, her hand without strength._

_It felt fucking fantastic to die by his hand, to get a private viewing of the now strongest man in Seireitei, but _she hungered for more.

_Retsu desired more blood, fighting, swordsmanship. As contenting as this end was, befitting, it was equally contemptuous. _

_Her body slithered roughly off the ill kept sword, dropping to the ground because he cut the puppet strings life had danced her with. She thought to the tunnel in her chest and scar on her throat. Scars were fantastic reminders, incensing incentives. Initiators._

_The next go-round, she grinned viciously, she would play as she pleased and fight whomever she sought. _

_Black was encroaching the edges of her vision, steadier than the readily pooling scarlet on the floor she lay._

Kagome propelled forward, choking on the blood in her throat, clutching her neck and sternum. The night was dark, an illuminated 0403 nothing but blurred red in the corner of her vision.

Fuck this dream, that woman, these pipe-dream wounds.


	3. Their Priestess

**Title:** 33.3% of the Sunset's Birdcage

**Author:** Ri-Ryn

**Chapter 3:** Their Priestess

**Genre:** Drama/Angst

**Word Count:** 275

**Rating:** M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens)

**Disclaimer:** Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

**Warnings:** Heavy Language. Slight Body Dysphoria & Body Horror. Mental Disorder/sorta' psychosis eventually? Blood. Violence. Death.

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_Kikyō assumed they thought she deceased by this point in what must be late evening. Rough hands exchanged her body, cold water now seeping into her wounds. Perhaps she was dead, and the gouge from shoulder to hip was sentenced to be a searing pain for eternity?_

_Voices underwater deafened her. Her body was in motion again, heat now warming her pallor beyond allowable and a fresh robe, by the only kind hands this evening, clothed her once again. The same, intimately kind hands wove a sharp rosary of demon's teeth and stone into stiff fingers, a cold sensation pleasant to all mortal's and demon's skin making contact with hers._

_This condemning jewel that sentenced all its keepers, Kikyō abhorred it and prayed that Inuyasha spoiled upon the sacred tree he was sealed upon._

_Appendages raised her thrice now, until she could feel the prodding of kindling into her back. The sharper branches sifted into her robes and beneath her human skin. The waterlogged voices were back anew, wailing and hiccuping this time._

_Fire licked at her skin, lapping it away to bite deeper below. Her throat was constricted with death; she desired quietus, for eternal placidity to claim it's due. _

_A funeral pyre was burning and so was Kikyō._

Kagome breathed in and exhaled, entranced by the bonfire from her junior high's cultural festival celebration. Flames danced like thrumming blood in a river, caressing the wood's surface and eating down into it without remorse.

She stood stiffly and turned away, running away unlike the burning corpse.

A voice or two called out half-heartedly to Kagome, but everyone knew Higurashi was different. A living contradiction.


	4. A Mother's Child

**Title:** 33.3% of the Sunset's Birdcage

**Author:** Ri-Ryn

**Chapter 4:** A Mother's Child

**Genre:** Drama/Angst

**Word Count:** 264

**Rating:** M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens)

**Disclaimer:** Inuyasha belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

**Warnings:** Heavy Language. Slight Body Dysphoria & Body Horror. Mental Disorder/sorta' psychosis eventually? Blood. Violence. Death.

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"Mama?"

"Hm?" Saya Higurashi hummed, telling her daughter that she was listening.

"How...how does someone stop doing something that they don't want to do? That they never wanted to do?"

Gracious, Kagome was only fourteen and already she was trying to run from school and the shrine. Youth. Saya turned and paused, looking at her daughter more closely. She was nervous, pallid, and avoided eye contact with Saya.

She turned back to tonight's dinner. "Well, what is it they don't want to do?"

"Bad things. Lots of bad things, Mama."

Saya made sure her stirring remained constant: it would not do for their meal to burn. "How bad are we talking about, Kagome?"

Kagome fidgeted, tearing at the string on her skirt. "It depends? Sometimes they do good things too. But that doesn't just erase everything else, does it?"

Saya wiped her hands on her apron, reaching for the saké on the counter to add to the simmering pot. "Maybe they're just young, then? Perhaps they need some time to grow and learn a lesson." A teenage rebellion that Kagome did not seem to want. "And hopefully their family will be there to catch them when they fall."

"So they should do what they want?" Kagome whispered, horrified and the furthest from mollified. Some wretched piece of her soul felt vindicated, the other third coldly indifferent.

"I think for now they should continue as they have, maybe try to do more good than bad."

If Saya had turned around then, she would have no recognition of the person wearing the face of her child.


End file.
